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Leonard Heiman
Leonard Richard Heiman (born 17 April 1948) is a Brunanter historian, filmmaker and author. He is best known for the Clawthion series. Biography Early life Heiman was born in 1948 in the upper-class suburbs of Grijzestad, Brunant as the first out of three children to Robert Willem Heiman, a stock market investor from Rotterdam, and Marta Anne Heiman (née Limbaach), a housewife from The Hague. Robert met Marta during the Christmas season in Amsterdam in 1945, and the two got married shortly after. As a child, Heiman attended Leuvis Primary School in the Old Town region of the main city of Grijzestad, which is where he had his first fascinations with the arts. According to Heiman, he would "often write short plays and ballads to certain people in his life, and recite or act them out to the class". In his later years of primary school, he developed a following for history and "the Greats", such as Ambroos I and Marten Sneijder. In 1959, he graduated from Leuvis as one of the highest-ranking students in the school in the subject of Language, and was later described by one of his teachers as "socially and personally optimistic, and very enthusiastic about the world of today." Heiman then attended St. Matthew's Gifted Secondary School in the same neighborhood later that year, and one of his historical poems titled Why I Adore Alexander the Great was published in the school newspaper. During this period of time, he often states in interviews that he wrote "lots and lots of unfinished, sometimes even barely complete books at multiple times at once during this era," and was often stressed out most of the occasion. However, he still graduated from the school in 1966 definitely above the average standard, and he began to attend the prestigious Grijzestad University, where he says his "life definitely changed for the better". During his time at University, Heiman developed an interest in classic movies, such as Casablanca and Citizen Kane. His literary works had also gotten him some recognition, as his plays and short stories were often featured in the school paper, and were highly popular on his local campus. During his second year in University, he began the first rough draft of what would eventually become his first historical novel, The Iliad: A Further Look & Analysis. But then, in 1969, he graduated from Grijzestad University with a Bachelor's degree in Dramatic Arts. Early career After leaving the University's campus, Heiman moved back in with his parents and two sisters in the upper-class suburbs until 1972, when he deemed himself financially and emotionally responsible enough to own a house. During that time he worked multiple low-income jobs, which left him with very little time to write. However, he was able to release his first novel The Iliad: A Further Look & Analysis in May of 1970, with Poseidon Publishers sponsoring and publishing the book. The book garnered somewhat average sales, with almost 10,000 copies having been sold by the end of that year. The book's sales were able to fund Heiman's first two plays The Sun and the Moon and Butterfly Effect, published in February and July 1971 respectively. The plays gained a decent following, and were acted out occasionally in a few small auditoriums across Brunant. By this point, the books and the plays had given him enough revenue to finally move out to Koningstad, Brunant with his fiancee, Katherina Lowys Smithe in 1972. The rise to fame with Clawthion, later career During the years of 1972 and 1973, Heiman had been working on what many consider his magnum opus: The Rise of the Restless Men, the first book in the Clawthion series, a series of books, TV shows and movies based on the steampunk, apocalyptic world of Clawthion. The first book in the series was published on 11 June 1973 in Brunant, and instantly became a best-seller. Howard Carthage of the The Daily Post called the Clawthion series in general "A Tolkien-like epic, with extremely complex characters, with their own motives, ideas and visions." Category:Living people Category:Writers Category:Historians Category:1948 births Category:Grijzestad University alumni